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Manage the Waters of the World – A Global Water Redistribution Initiative

This is a plea for all the world leaders meeting at COP21 to change the law governing the Antarctic. It is a truly wonderful thing that countries got together to protect the Antarctic from any sort of commercialization, habitation, hunting, and generally being polluted, but I think it is high time the laws protecting Antarctica are revised to allow a world team to deal with the dangerous rate at which the ice is melting. It should be the United Nations Environmental Programme or one ‘not for profit’ world organization, hopefully springing from COP 21, that is formed to manage the waters of the world now.

This is what we need:

The most obvious thing is to harvest the fresh, very oxygen-rich water coming off the icebergs, sometimes in drips, but very often torrents, continually causing sea levels to rise and create the obvious havoc with the ocean shoreline flooding as well as inland flooding. As you know, all that extra volume puts more pressure on the sea floor, triggering more frequent and severe earth shifts which trigger more frequent and severe tsunamis[1]. Also, since fresh water evaporates more readily than salt water, it adds to increased precipitation, resulting in more inland and coastline flooding and more frequent super storms, hurricanes, cyclones, etc., as evidenced by the past few years.

Adding all the fresh water melting off the polar ice caps into the seas also has a negative effect on marine life [2].

Since more rock is now exposed due to melting ice, an endothermic reaction is created, carrying the heat up the rock underneath the glacier, again hastening the melting.

I have had many discussions about how to harness the water coming off the icebergs when it is already melted, and have always been told that it is too difficult and dangerous due to weather conditions, logistics, etc., but the consequences of rising sea levels make it so worth the efforts of our scientists, engineers and innovators, to find a way to put that fresh water into vessels and deliver it to the many people around the world who desperately need it, and away from where it will only harm us in the end. I therefore plead with world leaders to address the topic of harnessing the water from polar ice caps at COP 21.

The other obvious way the ice is added to the sea levels is when the giant chunks of ice or ice islands break off from the main body of ice. [3] This is tricky subject, because we of course should try and harness that fresh water ice before it melts in to the ocean, but we don’t want to hasten the process unnecessarily, because that giant chunk of ice is still doing an important job in keeping the water around it cold. So the team managing the waters of the world will have to size up when best to either to either blow up icebergs and collect chunks of ice inside to be placed inside huge vessels and let the ice melt in them, or figure out how to collect the melted ice while on or near the iceberg and then deliver it where most needed.

Or with the giant ice sheet the size of Chicago, (278 square miles or 720 square kilometers) and as much as 2 kilometers deep, that broke off the Pine Island Glacier in Antarctica, in July of 2013 (partly as a result of the deep ocean water getting warmer, going underneath the ice sheet, melting it from below, creating a growing gap between the ice sheet and the rock, allowing it to break free from the main ice sheet). It probably moved to warmer waters at a much slower rate due to its size, so in that case we could continue to cool the oceans as long as possible before harvesting it. It was also holding back enormous ice sheets, so if they start to fall into the ocean, we are in for even more rising sea levels for sure if a world organization doesn’t step in now to manage things for us.

Ways to manage the water of rising sea, lake and river levels could include building inland canals from shorelines prone to flooding, creating reservoirs and directing the water there, which would be especially helpful when fighting the increasing number of forest fires around the world as well as irrigation when it involves fresh water. Redirecting the water inland all around the world, (where practical to do so), will not only keep the sea levels from getting dangerously high, but will serve the needs of communities and agriculture at the same time.

We also need to increase pumping the water out of the ocean and into desalinization plants and re-distributing it via pipelines and vehicles at a greater rate. I understand that there are lots of challenges with this, but again, it is time to deal with them and put this task into the hands of communities around the world and it is up to world leaders and more local governments to lead the way.

Local lawmakers should be directed to limit building too close to shorelines, and communities have to be more realistic when it comes to rebuilding too near shores, rivers andflood plains, because things are most likely going to get worse, and the same flooding is bound to repeat – so why rebuild. Create park land out of such areas and plant mangroves to anchor the shore.

The cost of massive flooding is not only monetary, and devastating to lives and communities, but really, how many super storms, tidal waves and floods can the waters of the world take before the amount of debris, sewage, chemicals, nuclear waste, etc., that can get washed into them becomes too much for them and the seas, rivers and lakes, and all the life in them start to die or increase poisoning us before they do die?

World leaders need to be realistic about the need to ban any new building of nuclear plants on large bodies of water, or rivers which feed them. For instance any plants on the ocean coast lines or Great Lakes in North America should be moved to smaller existing or man-made lakes where spills would not connect with and contaminate entire systems.

We need to get more aggressive in dealing with forest fires! There should be an international organization that is formed to aid countries that having uncontrollable fires. We simply cannot allow them to burn as they do for days, weeks and months on end. Local, national and world organizations need to concentrate more efforts on preparedness and work as teams to put them out faster. It is heartbreaking to have people work so hard to cut down on carbon emissions, while we have forest fires raging for days and weeks, greatly increasing carbon levels, and making that snowball roll faster down the hill when it comes to climate change.

In the end, the cost of prevention will far outweigh the cost of the having to too much water where we don’t want it on so very many levels, so here’s to a really successful COP 21 to create strategies as a global team to manage the waters of the world!

It is a more highly evolved society that works as one team and shares its resources and It is up to the United Nations Environmental Programme, world and local leaders to lead the way, and work with citizens around the world to redistribute water so it is helping us and not harming us, and ensure that no one has to go without clean, fresh drinking water while it needlessly melts away into the seas.